The main characters don’t know what’s going on – why their master has suddenly left them, the character whose pov we usually follow is extremely sheltered, so we don't know much about the world itself too. Learning together with her adds to the charm. She is a budding magician, very weak physically and lacking experience, and her buddy is, on the other hand, a very cool lady with special abilities, later they pick up another (unnecessary, imo) girl. As you have noticed almost everyone in the cast is a cute girl. There’s a lot of cute – fluffy cats, fluffy young women, fluffy imaginary draught animals. Though in later chapters a danger is revealed, so it won’t be exclusively slice of life, and old traumas remind of themselves from time to time.
The world is fragrant too – small fantasy villages, pristine forests, craftspeople being proud of their crafts, ornate clothes, characterful dwellings of magicians.
Or it is supposed to be. The art is simplistic most of the time, functional, pleasant, but featureless unless the author focuses. While it isn’t a sin, the issue is that magical fantasy with girl main characters at this point is almost expected to have gorgeous overdetailed art, there’s incredibly powerful competition in this department. I think in later chapters there’re more scenes with effort put in - we start to encounter dwellings, people and food with a lot of detail, so it maybe also is the issue of development, but the point stands. (There is not much of sexualization in designs, if any, by the way.)
And the writing puts emphasis on unique and strange aspects, mainly the feeling of being ignorant, not adequate, even unnecessary. Characters are friendly, limitedly helpful, they let you stay the night, but it feels like no one really connects. They probably are supposed to be chummy, but keep the plot going with omissions, to grow and develop together – but the impression of alienation grows.
There’s a number of works where the melancholy of drifting through life and/or not fitting, demonstrated through the division between different kinds of beings (magicians and mundane people, for example), is sort of masked through beauty or cuteness. But with Yotsukoto the feeling of cute exterior being sabotaged by deep sadness is especially strong, mostly because the cuteness is insufficient, and the sadness is deep-rooted and maybe even unintended. It’s interesting to learn what’s at the core of the conflict and where the characters will go in the end however.
Yotsukoto is another entry in the subgenre of slightly sad pretty fantasy where people deal with magic, rules and self-discovery rather than monsters – in a mostly peaceful picturesque world. The strong side is the slowly developing plot centered around a mystery. The weaker side is art. And somewhat disturbing dysfunctionality of relationships is the mixed – it makes this manga’s writing special, but also may not be to everyone’s liking. In my opinion, this makes Yotsukoto best fitting for occasion or to those who are very interested in the topics (magic, fantasy journey, moe) rather than a thing for everyone.
